The Hills are Alive!

Tuesday, 14 July, 2015

California

Today we were at Yosemite NP all day.  We also, sadly, saw a disturbing sight.  As we were driving down one of the roads in the park, the car in front of us swerved, yet still hit a bear.  Actually, the bear was running across the road and the car was not speeding, so I guess they collided.  They lost a bunch of the plastic by their front wheel but the people were fine.  The bear did not move and Joshua burst out in tears about the bear.  Randy was driving so I told him to pull over immediately and went back to Joshua's door to hold him in my arms while he cried.  When he was just sniffling, we went up to make sure the people that hit the bear were OK.  Both of the children were very upset about the bear.  It happened so fast!  Luckily we were going slowly enough that we could swerve around the bear without hitting it or the other vehicle.

We have now changed biomes , having gone from desert to woodsy mountain.  It was somewhat cooler in the mountains too!  :)  It got warmer as the day went on, but just a step into shade and it was fine.  Again, with the bears, we stopped in a parking lot and found a quiet area near a trail to eat our lunch--we noticed big metal boxes with chains and clips--they were food lockers to keep the food from the bears.  The signs asked people to please put their food in the food lockers instead of keeping it in their cars to decrease the damage the bears do to the cars in the parking lot.  You just put your food, cooler, etc in the locker and clip the chain--the boxes are used communally.  There was also a cable and cord on the dumpster so that bears didn't go down the dumpster chute and not be able to get back out again.  A note on the map said to keep small children near you.  There are mountain lions in the park and they might attack them if they are too far ahead or behind you.  If they attack, lift your children above you to make them appear bigger and fight back.  I read it aloud and we all laughed so hard because of the way they stated it!

Green, woodsy mountains

Bear food storage boxes

At Yosemite, we drove around and stopped in turn-outs or parking spaces to take pictures and hike.  We found the half dome that is in all of the guide books and photos of Yosemite (we dutifully took photos from all angles).   It was nice.  We took one hike that was wound wonderfully through a fragrant pine forest.  One of the trail markers noted .8 miles to the Vernal Falls.  Well, we figured that was easy, let's do that, then figure out how much further we wanted to go on.  The sign doesn't tell you that those .8 miles are all steeply uphill with no leveling off.  We reached the falls (not worth the climb, though the hike was nice) and noticed that the path continued to go up.  We'd had enough of going up and didn't want to commit ourselves to more, so we returned (a lot of down).

Randy

Joshua, the actor

Joshua

Shelby, the victor in the wood chunk game (you really don't want to know!)

We also went to Glacier Point, which is at the end of a really long road.  It is one of the more remote points, but there were a lot of people there.  We walked up to the point and checked out the geology exhibit, then checked out the gift store and had ice cream before getting back in the car to leave the park.

Big, old, pine trees!

Very tall trees!

Half-dome

Half dome

El Capitan

Two waterfalls, you can see in the photo at the bottom of this section
that they are far away--but we could hear them!

Half dome

Joshua, the strong

The waterfalls are in the middle, Half dome on the left.

We drove and drove and finally reached Mariposa which is a cute little town that looks like it comes from the 1880s wild west.  Dinner, then swimming in the pool.  Our room is in one of two small little houses that were built behind the already large hotel.  We have two adjoining rooms (one bed in each room) for the price of one room and there is a little sitting area in the center off the screened porch.  They are full-up.  The park was also full of people.  Way too many people in a small space.  Too many cars and buses and shuttles and bikers and hikers!  It was a beautiful park in a mountain full of huge pine trees, but there was no solitude to commune with the nature.  Driving along, you could notice all of the different barks on the different pine trees--very cool.

After a week, they're still smiling!